George Howard Earle, Jr.

“ If by industry, improvement and invention, a plant producing 1,000 barrels a day of a commodity can be increased, without increase of cost to the consumer, to 10,000 barrels a day, it is of enormous advantage to the public whether there be an immediate decrease in price or not. The stimulus, therefore, that should be given, for such increase of production must not only reduce scarcity, but must increase competition, and ultimately reduce prices. ”

“ To say, therefore, that these benefactors to industry and trade are not to have the benefit and reward for the short period that competition does not take it away from them, but are even to be treated as criminals for taking the reward thus justly earned, is to violate the whole spirit of the Constitution. ”

“ To the writer it seems that only second to the dangers of destroying Liberty is the danger of overburdening the Supreme Court of the United States. It was America's greatest invention in government—that it should be respected, even revered, is in the same degree of importance in the safeguarding of Liberty as that free competition should not be disturbed as the only safe method of fixing commodity prices. ”

“ Why is it that, notwithstanding the law of decreasing returns, sugar that in early days could not be bought for $1.00 a pound, has, in ordinary times, become one of the cheapest of commodities? The answer is obvious. The high price stimulated investment of capital, and the application of invention, genius and intense energy, which, in turn, stimulated production and the consequent competition that resulted in the decline always following. ”

“ Apart from the fact that no Court, even of supermen, could ever transact all the business of the United States, it is equally clear that that business could not be carried on if, with the hourly fluctuations that must take place in the value of commodities, every dealer in them must wait for the time necessary to ascertain whether he was legitimately engaging in business or had committed criminal offenses beyond number. ”

“ Eradicate it, and competition necessarily ceases—dies. Every person engaged in interstate commerce necessarily attempts to draw to himself, and to exclude others from, a part of that trade; and, if he may not do this, he may not compete with his rivals, all other persons and corporations must cease to secure for themselves any part of the commerce among the States, and some single corporation or person must be permitted to receive and control it all in one huge monopoly. ”

“ Much could be added to show the impossibility of replacing any body, any government or governmental agency as a successful substitute for all the peoples of the world, acting jointly and by means of free competition, as the price fixers of non-monopolistic commodities. ”

“ Mill forcibly points out how deleterious it is always to deprive people of the education, the creation of energy, independence and self-control, that result from their freely conducting their own business affairs: "There cannot be," he says, [3] a combination of circumstances more dangerous to human welfare, than that in which intelligence and talent are maintained at a high standard within a governing corporation, but starved and discouraged outside the pale. Such a system, more completely than any other, embodies the idea of despotism. ”

“ One such step in Socialism leads to another, and the outcome is the subversion of existing society. * * * Shall we accept dishonor, or shall we disappear down the unknown path of Socialism? One or the other must we choose, if the public is pleased to occupy itself in the future with the price question. * * * And so soon as the forces operating on price are understood to be complex, and of a nature not to be interfered with by legislation, we shall be free from a dangerous agitation. ”

“ The etymology of the word "competition" is perfectly obvious. People compete when they seek an object together. In its legal sense and significance, it is an act directed to the purpose of acquiring a common thing or end individually and as against others. It will later be shown that, so far as price fixing of commodities is concerned, this common seeking, because of the enormous difficulties of the subject, is the only practical and effective method. ”

“ It is a strange development—indeed, a curious travesty on justice—that the railway, which, by reason of its low cost of transportation, has practically destroyed the farming interests of the East, should be regarded by the farmer of the West as the vampire sucking out the blood of his agricultural profits ”

“ The initial fallacy, which the law has so far exposed, is in assuming that high prices are necessarily excessive prices; for high prices are under a state of freedom and in the absence of restraints, whether by Government or anyone else, the sole permanent cure for scarcity. Competition is as automatic as the thermometer. ”

“ The Eastern farmer must justly regard the railway, and the resultant competition of the richer farm land in the West, as the cause of his ruin and the force which has driven him to new employments; yet the Western farmer would not now be in existence if it were not for the railway. The proof that it has served the Western farmer well is to be found in the sad ruins of Eastern agriculture. ”

“ The trade principles under discussion certainly have recognition in the constitutional provisions as to patents, that go to the extent of even creating monopolies. Such monopolists have not only a common right of determining their prices for their products, but they have a right of action against any one who dares compete with them. This has, however, always properly been held necessary and just, because the public forever after has the benefit resulting from the energy and improvement thus incited. ”

“ To say, therefore, that the seeking of this legitimate and highly beneficial reward, even for the short time it can be enjoyed, is to imperil a man in all the dangers of criminal prosecution, is to say that which is economically unsound. ”

“ As a fall of prices inures to the benefit of creditors, a rise of prices would inure to the benefit of debtors. If it would be wrong to have legislation favoring the creditor class, so it would be wrong to have legislation favoring the debtor class. ”

“ The exercise of these undoubted rights is essential to the very existence of free competition, and so long as their exercise by any person or corporation in no way deprives competitors of the same rights, or restricts them in the use of these rights, it is difficult to perceive how their exercise can constitute any restriction upon competition or any restraint upon interstate trade. ”

“ But in their totality such inventions are trivial in comparison with those created by the stimulus of competition and increased production, which are never patented or extensively known. Such are the inventions, improvements and devices which are developed from day to day in the course of industry and business, and are directly attributable to the vitalizing forces which unfettered competition and freedom in trade nurse into being. ”

“ They have done nothing more against the plaintiffs than pursue to the bitter end a war of competition waged in the interest of their own trade. * * * I can find no authority for the doctrine that such a commercial motive deprives of 'just cause or excuse.' * * * All commercial men with capital are acquainted with the ordinary expedient of sowing one year a crop of apparently unfruitful prices ”

“ Of course, it does not tend either to courage or clarity of judgment for a business man who may be making a thousand sales a day to fear that he may unwittingly be committing an equal number of criminal offenses, that may subject him to heavy penalties of fine and imprisonment, if some District Attorney and jury, desirous of getting bargains, might decide that he should have charged less for the commodities that he has sold. ”

“ At a certain price, a certain number of people will buy a given article. Raise the price of this article without raising the purchasing power and the demand will fall off. This was true from the beginning of human barter and trade, and this will be true down to the last set of human beings who burn the last bit of fuel available upon a cold and exhausted earth. ”

“ The right of each competitor to fix the prices of the commodities which he offers for sale * * * is indispensable to the very existence of competition. Strike down or stipulate away that right, and competition is not only restricted, but destroyed. ”

“ However true this may be, it is unfortunate that Professor Fisher, although it was not relevant to the purpose of his book, did not use his illuminating mind to show how great such failure of duty would really be; for, where a business is a continuing one, such profits are always more than apt to be entirely illusory, and ultimately absolutely necessary to balance inevitable loss! ”

“ The purpose of the Act of July 2nd, 1890, was, however, to prevent the stifling of competition, not to destroy it or to foster monopoly, and any construction of any of its provisions which would give it such an effect is unreasonable and inconsistent with the object and spirit of the law. ”

“ And this brings us to the very heart of the question of 'profiteering.' I make bold to say that the public has relatively little interest in the earnings upon capital, and, in any event, a great deal less than in the question of the business ability of his butcher and baker and corner groceryman. ”

“ It will often happen that one dealer will make two or three times as much on his invested capital as his neighbors and competitors, and yet sell his goods to the public at a lower price, or, what is the same thing, sell better goods for the same money. ”

“ The acts of the defendant * * * are nothing more than the lawful exercise of these unquestioned rights which are indispensable to the existence of competition or to the conduct of trade. * * * An attempt by each competitor to monopolize a part of interstate commerce is the very root of all competition therein. ”

“ Taxation to make up the consequent deficits must run into large sums of money; the dislocation of business from inadequate transportation facilities to even greater sum; and the final results of checked enterprise and impaired development must inevitably follow. ”

“ Indeed, the supposed offense is really thrust upon them. He says: [18] "It is a symptom of the disease, not the disease itself. Profiteering is the effect, not the cause of the high cost of living. Those who have been trying to make the American people believe that profiteering causes high prices are in a class with the quacks who will tell a consumptive that his loss of weight is due to his high color, instead of saying that both are the symptoms of the tissue destroying bacillus. ”

“ And this concern and the policy based upon it * * * has expression * * * in a well-known national enactment. * * * competition, not combination, should be the law of the trade."
And so is established the proposition that the Statutory and Common Law, in relation to public policy, is that the public welfare is best served by giving the power and liberty of price fixing as to commodities to the whole body of our people, worked out through competition, and protected from control by any lesser group or groups, or even the Government itself. ”

“ The indictment should set forth such a state of facts as to make it clear that a manufacturer, engaged in what was believed to be the lawful conduct of his business, has violated some known law, before it is haled into Court to answer the charge of the commission of a crime. ”

“ In the instant case, the Court's conclusion is that the averments of the indictment, * * * read in the light of the defendant's inalienable right to deal lawfully with his own property, the handling, trading in, and disposing of which is made the subject of this indictment, fail to charge any offense, either in restraint of trade and commerce, under the Sherman Act, or any other law of the United States. ”

“ Competition * * * consists not only in making rates * * * , but includes the character of the service rendered. * * * The consolidation * * * creates a combination which restrains interstate commerce within the meaning of the statute, because, in destroying or greatly abridging the free operation of competition theretofore existing, it tends to higher rates."
Again the same tribunal says, in the case of the United States vs. Reading Company: [7] "The evil is the combination. Without it the several groups * * * have the power and motive to compete. ”